scholarly journals Motherhood in the Realm of Eastern Indian and Himalayan Art: An Iconographic Study of Visual Forms of Prajñāpāramitā from the National Museum, Delhi

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-22
Author(s):  
Abira Bhattacharya ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Belief System ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Eastern India ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Metaphorical Meaning ◽  
Metaphysical Grounding ◽  
Female Deities ◽  
Gender Subjectivity

This paper aims to outline and explore the development of iconographic forms and metaphysical grounding of one of the most venerable and distinguished Buddhist female deities, Prajсāpāramitā. The Buddhist female pantheon gained a paramount pre-eminence with the idolization of Prajñāpāramitā, establishing the significance of female figure and, especially, mother symbolism during the early medieval period under the liberal patronage of the Pala dynasty of Eastern India. The religious imageries and practices of this deity gradually disseminated to the adjoining Himalayan kingdoms of Nepal and Tibet through pedagogic and religious linkages, and became an integral part of their society. To understand the factors of cross-cultural assimilation through the study of representational forms and its metaphysical grounding, the paper explores and shows the metaphorical meaning of ‘prajсā’ propounded in the Prajñāpāramitā discourse, and its representation in cultic icons of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā and the manuscript. This thematic narrative opens up new avenues of interpretations on gender-subjectivity in Buddhist cosmology and pantheistic belief system which are touched upon in this paper. The idea of pronouncement and expansion of female-oriented texts and icons is highlighted through a study of select devotional icons of this deity, Prajсāpāramitā, from the collection of the National Museum, Delhi.

scholarly journals Conceptualizing the Multicultural ‘North’ in the Íslendingasögur: Peoples, Places, and Phenomena

Nordlit ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solveig Marie Wang
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Close Contact ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Spatial Awareness ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

During the early medieval period, a large part of Fennoscandia was inhabited by the Sámi (Zachrisson 2008, 32). With written sources such as Historia Norvegiæ, Ágrip af Noregs konungasǫgum, and Heimskringla referring to Sámi settlements in the Viking and medieval period reaching as far south into Norway as Hadeland (Einarsson 2007, 5-7), alongside archaeological excavations asserting a Sámi cultural presence south of the contemporary cultural borders of Sápmi (Bergstøl 2008), close contact between the groups is not surprising. Despite often being described as ‘desolate’ and ‘remote’ (especially in the terra nullis colonialism exercised by the Scandinavian nation states in early modern times), the northernmost parts of the Fennoscandian landscape complexes are described as already inhabited in several medieval Scandinavian sagas, including the Íslendingasögur. Primarily, these texts explicitly assert that the ambiguous and distant ‘north’ of Fennoscandia was a special, preternatural place, simultaneously internal and external to what medieval Icelanders perceived as ‘Nóregi’. Whether enforced by the ‘othering’ of characters depicted with northern descent through expressive features and abilities traditionally associated with the area or its indigenous inhabitants, by the descriptions of different landscapes and communities unequivocally ‘othered’ and distinct from that of the saga-writers’ reality, or by extraordinary phenomena connected to the two, ‘norðarliga í Nóregi’ is portrayed as somewhat distinct from that of the rest of the ‘national’ landscape. Encompassing an area extending further south than contemporary northern Norway, the notion of a supernatural north in the Íslendingasögur goes beyond an idea of a unified Nóregi. Moving into the land of powerful chieftains in Naumdælafylki and the ambivalent Hálogaland, venturing ‘á fjall upp’ to the Sámi borderlands of Finnmǫrkr, whilst also incorporating the mysterious landscapes and peoples of eastern Fennoscandia, the notoriously equivocal Kvenland and Bjarmarland, distinct descriptions of peoples, places, and phenomena appear and follow literary patterns and stereotypes that are sometimes archaic. By discussing the portrayal of north Norwegian landscapes and geographical understandings in these texts, in conjunction with an examination of the depiction of the Sámi, this essay aims to demonstrate how north Norwegian spatial awareness in the Íslendingasögur can help enlighten cross-cultural relationships and liminal identities, and present fewer rigid contrasts between people and cultures in Fennoscandia than previously accounted for.

Public Powers, Private Powers, and the Exploitation of Metals for Coinage

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Bianchi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Italian Journal ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship

In 1994, an article appeared in the Italian journal Archeologia Medievale, written by Chris Wickham and Riccardo Francovich, entitled ‘Uno scavo archeologico ed il problema dello sviluppo della signoria territoriale: Rocca San Silvestro e i rapporti di produzione minerari’. It marked a breakthrough in the study of the exploitation of mineral resources (especially silver) in relation to forms of power, and the associated economic structure, and control of production between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. On the basis of the data available to archeological research at the time, the article ended with a series of open questions, especially relating to the early medieval period. The new campaign of field research, focused on the mining landscape of the Colline Metallifere in southern Tuscany, has made it possible to gather more information. While the data that has now been gathered are not yet sufficient to give definite and complete answers to those questions, they nevertheless allow us to now formulate some hypotheses which may serve as the foundations for broader considerations as regards the relationship between the exploitation of a fundamental resource for the economy of the time, and the main players and agents in that system of exploitation, within a landscape that was undergoing transformation in the period between the early medieval period and the middle centuries of the Middle Ages.

Chestnuts in Charters

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ross Balzaretti
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Method ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Social Differences ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Specialized Production ◽  
System P ◽  
Macro Scale ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Economic Specialization

This chapter responds to a point which Chris Wickham raised in his recent review of my book on Dark Age Liguria: did chestnut cultivation show any economic specialization in this region in the early medieval period? Chestnuts figured a great deal in that book, which drew briefly on the surviving charter documentation for the region. In this chapter a more detailed analysis of charters from the tenth and eleventh centuries develops an answer to the question of specialized production with a comparative study in which the Genoese evidence is set alongside similar charter evidence from Milan and its region, where chestnuts were also cultivated for food. The Genoa–Milan comparison puts into practice Wickham’s advocacy of comparative method at the micro as well as at the macro scale, for regions where comparison has not historically been the norm. The comparison suggests that chestnuts were more important to the Genoese than the Milanese economy, in part for local climatic reasons but also, perhaps, because of fundamental political and social differences between these two cities. It will be shown that some charters show that the production of chestnuts was to some degree specialized, how it was specialized and what the consequences of that specialization were for each economic system.

Armenia

2021 ◽  
pp. 176-188
Author(s):  
Christina Maranci
Keyword(s):  
Church Architecture ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Relief Sculpture ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Southern Georgia ◽  
Art And Architecture

A study of medieval Armenian painting, church architecture, bas-relief sculpture, and other media demonstrates close attention to, and reception of, the art and culture of the Byzantine Empire. Historic Armenia (including the present-day Armenian Republic and territories in eastern Anatolia, southern Georgia, northwest Iran, and Azerbaijan) and the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (1199–1375, southwestern Anatolia) had close relations with neighboring powers throughout the medieval era, and scholars, most prominently Sirarpie Der Nersessian, have long studied the presence of Byzantine ideas in Armenian art and architecture. The early medieval period, the “Age of the Kingdoms” (ninth to eleventh centuries), and twelfth- to fourteenth-century Cilicia demonstrate strong evidence for contact and familiarity with Byzantine culture. An examination of select cases demonstrates the diverse and dynamic nature of such appropriations, reflecting the complex and changing nature of political, social, religious, and cultural relations between empire and locality.

The Britons in Southern Scotland

Antiquity ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 29 (114) ◽  
pp. 77-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The North ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The People ◽  
Northern Portion

The archaeological background of the people of what is now Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde in the Roman period was a La Téne one, and specifically chiefly Iron Age B. This links them intimately with the Britons of southern Britain in the conglomeration of Celtic tribes who called themselves Brittones and spoke what we call the Brittonic or Ancient British form of Celtic, from which are descended the three modern languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. To the north of the Forth was a different people, the Picts. They too were Celts or partly Celts; probably not Brittones however, but a different branch of the Celtic race, though more closely related to the Brittones than to the Goidels of Ireland and (in later times) of the west of Scotland. Not being Brittonic, the Picts may be ignored here. Our southern Scottish Brittones are nothing but the northern portion of a common Brittonic population, from the southern portion of which come the people of Wales and Cornwall. Some historians speak of the northern Brittones as Welsh, following good Anglo-Saxon precedent, but this is apt to lead to confusion. The best term for them, in the Dark Ages and early Medieval period, as long as they survived, is ‘Cumbrians’, and for their language, ‘Cumbric’. They called themselves in Latin Cumbri and Cumbrenses, which is a Latinization of the native word Cymry, meaning ‘fellow-countrymen’, which both they and the Welsh used of themselves in common, and is still the Welsh name for the Welsh to the present day. The centre of their power was Strathclyde, the Clyde valley, with their capital at Dumbarton.

scholarly journals The development of international law through the lens of the Italian doctrine

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-187
Author(s):  
Massimo Iovane
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period

Abstract This review essay analyses a very interesting collection of essays providing a fresh examination of international law schools operating in Italy from the early medieval period to current times. The Essay will show that the book adopts a completely new presentation of this subject, offering thus an unbiased assessment of the doctrinal debate developed in between the two World Wars.

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